"All's fair in love and war"

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This appears to be a manifestly untrue axiom. Why do people still say it?

― N., Friday, 14 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i. Self-justification.

ii. "Don't bother me with your problems, recently dumped/bombed individual"

iii. DO they?

― Tom, Friday, 14 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yes, they do, Tom. Only last week I heard Donald Rumsfeld employ it in defence of the US bombing of the Mazar-e Sharif POW camp.

― N., Friday, 14 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Rumsfeld's hardly credible. He was a Nixon lackey, after all.

― Nicole, Friday, 14 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

If it were true how could they justify War Crimes cases in courts? Unless they also had courts for love crimes.

― Emma, Friday, 14 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I have just been looked at for at-desk larffing. Back to work Tom.

― Tom, Friday, 14 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Just the once? My colleagues are constantly giving me dark looks and saying to each other 'Emma does no work [NB - UNTRUE]and just sits sniggering at her computer all day'.

― Emma, Friday, 14 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Before this gets out of control, I should just like to point it out that I was making it up about Donald Rumsfeld.

― N., Friday, 14 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think you have misunderstood the statement. "All's fair in love and war" = All is fair = Anything goes in love and war.

Now that is pretty much true in war - until we get upon the thorny and rather artifical idea of war crimes. In love, well people can justify any old crap in the name of love. Just look at In The Name Of Love by U2.

― Pete, Friday, 14 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"All's fair in love and war" = All is fair = Anything goes in love and war.

Yeah - that's the way I understood it. I still think it's rubbish. As the existence of war crimes, the Geneva Convention, U2 and love rats proves.

― N., Friday, 14 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well, if it's fair in war, then it's fair in luv, coz as Pat Benetar tells us "Love is a Battlefield".

― Sterling Clover, Friday, 14 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

SO if you were making it up about Rumsfeld then are you trying to say that All's fair in ILE threads as well?

― Pete, Friday, 14 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

No. Stupid lies employed in the service of a joke are acceptable. Fecal porn and incitement to racial hatred are not.

― N., Friday, 14 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Would this be a platitude?

― helen fordsdale, Friday, 14 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yes it is manifestly untrue and thank you for pointing it out, next time someone says it I will scream a denial at the top of my lungs as I do when people justify being horrible with "life's not fair."

― Maria, Friday, 14 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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